


I Can See You Starin', Honey

by rachelamberish



Series: folklore [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, Fix-It, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Orgasm Denial, Richie Tozier Cries During Sex, Shameless Bottom Richie Tozier, Shocking I know, bon iver created an environment that was so melancholically horny, eddie kaspbrak's crying kink, every fic in this series can and should be read on its own, exile.mp3, look I listened to folklore and went absolutely feral, the losers club is not really in this, the triumphant return of big dick richie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:54:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25516867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rachelamberish/pseuds/rachelamberish
Summary: (like he's just your understudy; like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me.)“This is never gonna fucking change, is it?” he asks, resigned.“What?”“Us.”Eddie swallows.It’s clear by the way Richie says it, and the way that he looks at him when he does, that he really means“You”.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: folklore [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1855267
Comments: 32
Kudos: 261





	I Can See You Starin', Honey

**Author's Note:**

> i listened to folklore two nights ago, went to bed many thoughts head full, then woke up like three hours later, lit every candle in my apartment and wrote this in a fucking furious fever dream, like the ghost of bon iver had possessed me.  
> in my head the notes eddie plays on the piano in this are absolutely the opening notes of exile even though this fic takes place in the 1990s and miss swift didn’t invent the piano until the year 2020 when she released that track!!! but oh well  
> anyway enjoy
> 
> ***every fic in this series is meant to be read on its own. they do not tie into each other.

**eleven**

As best as he can remember, Eddie is eleven years old when he begins to notice the path that Richie’s eyes follow.

Frankly, it seems impossible now that he hadn’t noticed it sooner. The obnoxious square, black-rim glasses made Richie’s too-big blue eyes the first thing you noticed about him when he entered a room. Before even his smile, or his laugh.

But he’s eleven when the way that Richie stares—the way that his eyes move on him or don’t, or the movements of his eyes that he tries to conceal once Eddie turns his head and frowns at the sudden absence of the feeling—it starts to mean something.

It starts with a pout. When Bill grabs Eddie’s hand in the school hallway, and pulls him along and away from Richie because Bill and Richie have had some fight, and Eddie’s what Bill gets in the divorce. It’s a pout—like Bill’s taken away a favorite toy, and it might have had Eddie rolling his eyes before. Because Richie’s possessiveness over him was often irritating to the point of exhaustion. Because they had been friends for two years now and Eddie, though he was still very fond of him, knew a few things about Richie: that he was selfish, and childish even for an eleven-year-old, and that he rarely thought about others when it wasn’t in the context of what they provided for Richie. Eddie laughed at his jokes and tolerated him because few other people would, and that made him a hot commodity, he supposed. Richie’s interest in him didn’t have much more depth than that.

Except now it’s different.

Richie doesn’t pout at Bill. He doesn’t shout; doesn’t call Bill a _“dumbass”—_ doesn’t finish the argument. He forfeits his usual compulsive need to have the last word. It’s silence that meets Richie Tozier as his pout is directed towards the fold of Bill’s fingers over Eddie’s, and as Eddie turns his head back to him, at first to glare, instead he sees this, and stops.

Richie has turned red. Beet-red. His brow is furrowed. His nose wrinkles, and he just leaves. Slams his locker, and heads to class.

It strikes Eddie as odd, is all.

**thirteen**

It’s in the Neibolt house, in the way that Richie rushes to him when he’s on the floor with the clown looming over him, when Eddie’s seconds from a death like Georgie’s. It’s the lack of self-preservation necessary for Richie to have done that, that Eddie will think on later as he muses over it, cast tight around his arm and grounded in his bedroom.

The uncharacteristic, utter selflessness of it.

What stays isn’t the feel of Richie’s hands on his face, because Richie touches him always, now. Always, when he doesn’t need to, and it’s normal. (He thinks of it in the same vein that he thinks of Bill grabbing his hand that day in the hallway. Friendly possessiveness. Only not. Only…he doesn’t think of it like that. Not really. Because Bill doesn’t touch him—not nearly as often as Richie, anyway, and Richie hadn’t either, before…before that day.)

What stays, really, is the way that Richie wears desperation on his face.

_“Look at me—Eds, look at me!”_

It stays. He keeps it; saves it for later. The way it makes his heart beat. The way it makes him feel warm all over, and safe.

And he thinks of the things the clown knows that even he didn’t—not before the Neibolt house.

_“ **What are you looking for, Eds?”**_

_“Look at me! Look at me!”_

And a shiver runs down his spine.

**fifteen**

But touches change, too.

“Are you kiddin’ me?” Richie asks, with teeth and a laugh that has never truly felt cruel. “Eds, you look like a newborn baby.”

“I have hair on my fucking _arms,_ Richie!”

“No, no—you see this?” Richie, sitting on the edge of Eddie’s bed, runs his big hands along his calves, ruffling the coarse, dark hair there. It’s all evidence of being a man. Eddie watches the motion, and hopes it’s not too weird how obsessed he is with it, like the other things he thinks about when he’s alone and Richie’s not here—stubble, and shoulders, and the scent of cologne.

It’s because he hadn’t hit puberty with quite the same force that Richie had. It’s different, is all. That’s why it fascinates him so much.

Richie runs his palm and fingers down his own left arm now, holding it up to show. The hair moves. Some of it stands straight up. “That’s hair, Eddie,” he says, as if Eddie didn’t know all too well.

 _“This?”_ He picks up Eddie’s arm from where it rests at his side and holds it up, wrist firm in his grip, and does the same motion—moving in a backwards motion across Eddie’s skin with the force of his whole palm.

“This is the stuff that was on your head when you came out of your mom’s vagina.”

Eddie scowls on the bed next to him. “Shut up.”

He tries to jerk his arm back, but Richie doesn’t give. Eddie blinks at the way it feels.

Richie doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. He’s still smiling, looking down at Eddie’s arm.

“Aw, don’t feel bad. It’s kinda cute. Cute, cute, cute.”

He raises his eyes then, and meets Eddie’s.

His smile fades. Slowly. As he reads the tell. As he reads the flush, and the lips parted in a bout of sudden breathlessness, and the gentle shock that has Eddie frozen.

Eddie could crawl away and die, but Richie’s grip on his fucking arm won’t let him. And that just makes it worse. Or better. Eddie doesn’t know anymore, which is which, and he loves that. Loves that in the way that he loves all things Richie—in the way that is dipped so sweetly and horribly in shame.

Richie’s eyes dart softly back to Eddie’s wrist, and Richie’s fingers wrapped tightly around it with the perfect pressure so that when he lets go, there will be soft pink marks there—evidence that will be so thrilling because it will fade within a minute.

Maybe Richie’s thinking of it, too.

With his other hand, Richie takes his index finger and begins to draw a line, from Eddie’s wrist up to his elbow. Slowly, and intent on the torture of it.

Dark eyelashes flutter up, and even though he can’t—not literally—Eddie can feel them on his skin, too, among the other sensations. Richie looks at him dead-on, and he’s watching him. The way that Eddie probably always wanted to be watched, he thinks, but didn’t know before today. There are pins and needles—both gentle and sharp—all over the skin of his arm, his face, his scalp and his back.

And Richie’s eyes say Richie knows it.

Eddie looks down at his arm, because he physically can’t do anything else, and as Richie’s finger moves, the sheer, tiny hairs on Eddie’s arm raise beneath it, along with the tiny bumps on his skin.

Richie makes a noise in the back of his throat that is deep, and appraising. It sends vibrations that reverberate both on Eddie’s skin and inside his body, in places he didn’t know as intimately as he should. It sounds like a guttural, _“Huh.”_

“Look at that. Guess you do have hair there, Spaghetti.”

Eddie swallows, and Richie can hear it, because it sounds throughout Eddie’s bedroom.

Richie’s eyes flash to his one more time, before the trance is gone, and something has changed. Something that crosses Richie’s eyes that is dangerous, and scary, and awful, because it stops it all.

Eddie hopes his eyes are begging. Pleading. He tries, anyway. Wordlessly—because they’ve never had words for it—what it is that they won’t say. Whatever it is, he just doesn’t want Richie to stop.

Richie drops Eddie’s arm like it’s a hot potato—like it’s burned him, and it hurts. The absence crosses Eddie like a cold, stiff breeze. Richie stands, and starts stepping away from the bed.

“I gotta get going.” He stoops to grab his discarded jean jacket off the floor.

_“Richie—”_

“No, don’t—!”

And Eddie almost gasps. Because for a moment, Richie’s angry in a way he can’t hide. He’s holding his eyes squeezed tight, hand raised in frustration. And his slip-up almost makes it real. Almost.

Richie blinks. His hands shake. He lets out a broken, choked-out laugh.

“Sorry. I, uh…I’m just real worked up. I got a lot of stress, you know. School.”

In a small voice that can’t look up at him, Eddie asks: “Since when have you gave a shit about school?”

Richie’s jaw clenches tight and clicks around.

He doesn’t have an answer, because there is none, so he climbs out the window without another word.

**seventeen**

From the piano bench where he sits at Bill’s house, he can hear his friends all talking and laughing and screaming in the backyard, as the sun goes down and an orange glow coats the Denbrough living room and casts a light and a warmth on the memory.

Eddie smiles, sadly and fondly, as he turns around and lets his fingertips graze softly along the keys, before he presses down and puts soft music in the air.

His mom had made him learn to play at the age of ten. It’s the one thing she’s ever given him that he’s thankful for.

“What’s that?”

The voice comes from behind him—from the kitchen, and it takes a moment for him to realize that Richie was not outside with the rest of them, but had returned through the back screen door to grab a beer from the fridge.

Eddie shrugs while he plays, lazily and contentedly.

“Just something I’ve bounced around in my head for a while.”

It’s only a couple of notes—a tune that he knows had only gotten into his head because it’s wistful and longing and so desperately sad, and sometimes when he looks at Richie he hears it. But Richie’s eyes still widen as he moves to sit next to him on the bench, knees sprawled on either side, beer clutched between his legs.

“You came up with that all by yourself?”

Eddie nods.

“Didn’t know you played piano.” Richie says it softly and reverently, tilting his head in a way that is begging for Eddie to look at him.

Eddie doesn’t. Won’t. Instead he shrugs.

“Thought I knew everything about you at this point.” Richie tilts his head back and takes a swig.

“You don’t.” Eddie tells him simply, not letting up on the keys.

“Are you mad at me?”

Eddie eventually breaks—his eyes dart over quick, almost missably so—to see the gentle, subtle shine in Richie’s eyes after he asks it.

Eddie shakes his head. “No.”

“Why are you mad at me?”

Eddie doesn’t answer.

“Is this because of…what I said…look, Eddie, I was drunk—”

“So you didn’t mean it?”

“I-“ Richie’s mouth flutters open, searching for the words and the air and the courage, maybe, to speak them. “I—was just screwin’ around—”

_(“R-R-Rich, you gotta pick truth.”_

_“Richie, you never pick truth! Come on!”_

_“Truth! Truth! Truth!”_

_“All right, all right, calm your fuckin’ tits. Truth. Hit me with it, Bevvie. Come on. Do your worst.”_

_“Prettiest girl at the school. Go.”_

_“Well, it’s gotta be you, Bevvie.”_

_“Besides me. That’s cheating. I’m the obvious choice.”_

_“Oh, you know what? Fuck, I change my answer. No girl’s pretty like Spaghetti.”_

_“Cop-out!”_

_“Nnooo, it’s not a cop out! Look at ‘im! Pretty eyes, pretty teeth, pretty hair. Make you go crazy. He’s even got that mouth—you know the one some girls have, it’s—”_

**_“What?”_ **

_“Come on, Eddie, he’s only fooling—”_

_“—made to suck cock.”)_

Maybe it’s the glare of the setting sun, but Richie’s eyes start to look red.

“I _mean it_ , Eds, I was drunk—” he spits, getting suddenly angrier. And Eddie shoots him a look with as much vitriol as he can muster, to match it.

Richie gasps, and that’s not the reaction he was expecting. Gasps like he’s been shot or something.

He drops the anger, and his next words come out—Eddie decides—more desperate than anything. _Desperate._

“I _never_ would’ve said it if I was sober, Eddie, _God,_ you gotta believe me, I—I’m _so fucking_ sorry—please, you can’t, you can’t hate me for that, it was a mistake, I f-fucked up—"

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Richie’s eyes search his face with a hunger for reassurance. He breathes heavy.

“Mean it? Did I…” Richie runs a hand absently—nervously, Eddie suspects—through the locks of his hair. “Nah. Nah, Eds, ‘course I didn’t, you know, it was just a stupid fuckin’ crack, alright, I was just…just teasin’. Come on. Like we always do.”

Eddie’s fingers get stuck. They won’t play anymore. He repeats the same note, once—twice. A third and final time. He stops, and lets out a breath of frustration. Doesn’t look at Richie, still, when he asks:

“You don’t think I’m pretty?”

It’s not a question that is asked for the sake of the answer. It’s part of the game they play. Eddie knows the answer. Has known it since Bill with his hand in the hallway. And he knows Richie, and knows that he will lie. But the game is a vice. It shoots thrills up and down his back when he asks the question, and waits with bated breath for the response, even though he’s aware, consciously enough, that it will disappoint him. That it will end the same as the last time they played it—leaving bitter, tired tastes in both their mouths.

Eddie, carefully, watches the shifts in Richie’s stare. The deer-in-headlights that occurs first, then the way his eyes get softer as he recognizes the game for what it is. He leans a shoulder on the piano and looks down at his beer. Richie makes his decision, Eddie supposes, when he doesn’t answer at all. Instead:

“You still going to prom with, uh…whatshername…”

“Karen,” Eddie answers. A dry, but gentle reminder.

“ _Karen._ That’s right. Karen. Who could forget Karen?”

“You, apparently.”

“You still going to prom with her?”

Eddie swallows stiff; runs his fingers faintly down the length of the keys, trying and failing to remember his place in the melody.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Richie nods as he hangs his head low.

“Just thought I’d ask.”

Eddie almost lets it go. But maybe something snaps, and he just can’t take it anymore.

“Why do you care? Why the fuck do you care who I’m—”

“Sunset looks good on you.”

Eddie blinks, and his bottom lip drops, and he drops his hands to stare at Richie staring back at him.

“Wh—”

“Just…you’re sitting there playing, and…there’s a…sunset behind you, and, uh…” Richie swallows, leaning back against the piano. “Yeah, I think you’re pretty. You look pretty right now.”

Eddie’s mouth opens and closes, again and again, shaking his head.

Richie shrugs. He readjusts himself on the bench so he’s sitting properly, facing the piano like Eddie is.

“But that’s just a fact, Spagheds. Like a broken clock being right two times a day, or, uh…that thing about dogs not being able to look up.”

Eddie snaps out of the stunned trance, just for a moment.

“Okay, dogs absolutely _can_ look up—"

“It’s not a big thing, it’s just…” Richie shrugs again—more of a half-shrug this time. It’s sloppy and shy and it reeks of self-consciousness, and it reminds Eddie, starkly, of Richie as a little kid. “You’re pretty, Eds. That’s all.”

Eddie’s face clenches. He pulls his lips between his teeth. It hurts. It’s painful.

Because surely Richie _knows_ that this is not how friends act. That these aren’t the things friends say. That these aren’t the things friends think. They played games because they had to, but surely Richie couldn’t have actually convinced himself of the things they said. They were lies, and Eddie knew enough truth about himself to know that. Maybe Richie didn’t.

He thinks about Richie, at times like these, and he just…

It’s like he feels his pain. Eddie hurts from the clown and this town, and hurts bad, but deep down he knows that Richie’s hurt is worse. Uglier. Darker. Worse because Richie’s stubborn, or maybe just fucking terrified, and won’t show it—not to anyone. Won’t tell anyone what his fear is. Won’t tell anyone what the clown really showed him that summer. Thinking about it makes Eddie want to cry, and scream into the fucking void. He can’t imagine the way it makes Richie feel.

He remembers the tune, now.

As Eddie sets his fingers back on the piano and begins to play the first notes, Richie shifts forward; sets his beer bottle on the hardwood floor.

“Hey, teach me how to play that, would ya?”

Eddie opens his mouth to speak—to shake his head, to say _“maybe later, Richie”,_ but then Richie’s hands are on top of his. His fingertips—gentler than Eddie remembers—fold naturally against his own.

Richie has leaned in and his right shoulder is flush with Eddie’s left, and Richie ducks and digs the bridge of his nose against the fabric of Eddie’s shirt. He adjusts, grinning, and then just rests there, breathing hot against Eddie’s skin while looking up at him expectantly.

Eddie only tries to fight the smile on his face for a few seconds. Then, he gives up. He moves his fingers underneath Richie’s, and laughs at the ridiculousness of it, and at how fucking sublime it feels to be close to him like this.

If his friends looked in and saw, he wouldn’t care, he thinks.

They play the song, and he giggles again, and so does Richie, and he feels Richie’s laugh vibrate on his skin, and send a new song into his body, like magic.

**nineteen**

Richie smokes and has his other hand tucked deep in the pocket of his jean jacket—now worn and torn after many years of use. Eddie can peer over and see the outline of his nervous tick, as he fidgets with the cigarette carton tucked inside the denim, flipping it over and over between his fingers.

Eddie warms his hands with his breath, rubbing them together in front of his face and blowing hot air, then repeating, over and over again in the silence.

It’s a nervous tick of its own kind, he supposes.

The streetlamps cast a gentle glow on Derry that night in autumn. It’s not the first time he thinks of Derry as peaceful. Maybe it’s an odd thing to think, after the clown. But it is. Peaceful.

He’s always said Richie’s smoking bothers him. And Richie knows that, but does it anyway. He doesn’t blow it in his face or anything like that, but he does it. Eddie assumes it’s because Richie knows it’s another way to push his buttons. But part of him has wondered lately if it’s another game. If Richie knows, and has always known, the way that Eddie finds it secretly erotic.

Richie flicks the bud with his thumb out into some house’s lawn. He exhales loudly with a shake of his head, like he were trying to muster up courage.

So many years, and Eddie knows these things about Richie like it’s his own pattern of breathing. His little ticks. His gestures. The small, otherwise insignificant rituals he does that give way to deeper meanings because they’re the only way he knows how to communicate the big things. Eddie’s memorized all of it. Because all of it is endearing, and makes his heart swell.

Without skipping a beat, Richie says:

“You let that guy kiss you at the party tonight.”

Eddie stares across the street at a streetlamp that’s slightly dimmer than the rest. He knew it was coming.

“Who, Tommy?”

“Yeah, fuck—yeah, Tommy. What, were you swapping spit with other guys I don’t know about?”

“No.”

“Tommy,” Richie breathes. “Shit, I didn’t…I didn’t know he was…”

There’s a long stretch of silence.

“…Gay?” Eddie offers.

Richie jumps out of his skin, like he’d been fuckin bit, or stung by a wasp.

“Jesus, Eddie, fuckin’…keep your voice down. Don’t you know where we are?”

Eddie just shakes his head.

“Henry Bowers isn’t gonna jump out of the bushes, Richie.”

Richie mutters: “Clown might.”

Eddie doesn’t respond to that. Richie rubs and scratches at the back of his neck.

“Tommy…fuck, I, uh…had social studies with that kid. I never…I never knew…”

Eddie screws up his face in confusion. “What? Would it have changed anything?”

Richie makes a dismissive sound with his lips.

“Pfft. No. I don’t talk to the guy. Just…”

“Then why do you care?”

Richie’s eyes go a little big, then revert back.

“Guess I…I don’t know. Um…”

Richie’s voice goes all shy at the end—in the way that Eddie loves because it’s very sweet, but also hates because he knows it’s the clown. Richie’s fear eating away at him, bit by bit, until there’s nothing left but a little choked out sound and a scared little boy.

Man. Richie’s a man now. They both are. Men. It sounds strange, but it’s true. And it makes Eddie’s toes curl to think; to say. Richie is a man. Richie is a man. _Richie is a man._

“Why’d you do that?” Richie asks, still small.

“Hm?” Because Eddie honestly hadn’t understood the question, and he’d been lost in his thoughts.

“Why’d you…why’d you let him kiss you?”

Oh.

“Uh…I don’t know. I guess…it didn’t hurt anything, you know. He wasn’t hurting anyone. I wasn’t gonna freak out on him. Didn’t want to be a dick.”

Richie stops walking. Eddie stops too; looks back at him. Richie’s staring down at the sidewalk. He looks confused.

“But I saw you, you…you kissed him back.”

Eddie swallows.

“Yeah, I did.”

“So, did you…did you like it?”

Eddie wishes Richie’s stare was something else. Wishes it was the stare of a man who knew what he wanted, and knew how to tell him with his eyes. Richie doesn’t know what he wants. Not from Eddie, or from himself. It’s painfully clear.

“I don’t know how to answer that, Richie,” Eddie says, bluntly.

“Wh—“ Richie breathes, at a loss. “What do you mean you don’t know how to answer that? That’s a pretty straight-forward fuckin’ question.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“What I want you to—”

“Did I like it because it was a guy or did I like it because it was Tommy?”

Richie swallows.

“I guess…uh,” he looks down at the concrete, as if it might have the answers. Then, resignedly, back to Eddie. “I guess…yeah, I guess both, Eds.”

Eddie nods, slowly. Stares at the buttons on Richie’s jacket. The jacket makes his shoulders look big. Big like he could pick him up. Like he could force him down. Like he could jerk him around. Like he could wrap a hand around his throat and—

Tommy’s kiss was sweet. Exploring. Curious. Gentle. Earnest. Other adjectives that were…nice.

“Tommy’s nice,” Eddie muses, but he says the word _nice_ like it’s an unfortunate quality. Because he thinks it sort of is. Richie’s not nice. Richie’s mean. Irritating. Disgusting, sometimes. Sometimes unintentionally cruel. And he doesn’t treat Eddie like he’s made of glass. He treats him like he’s made of strong fuckin’ stuff. And Eddie _lo—_ really fucking appreciates that about him. Despite…the constant back-and-forth, and the games. And the hurt they cause. “But I guess I could take him or leave him.”

“Seems like he’d rather take you.”

Eddie rolls his eyes.

“And, um,” Richie starts after softly clearing his throat. “The, um…the other thing?”

“You want to know…what? If I’m a queer like Tommy?” And the way Eddie says _queer_ is cruel. It’s really meant to be. He’s a little angry. More than a little angry. That Richie’s turning this all on him, like he always does and always has. He shouldn’t be so mean, though. He can’t blame him. Not when he knows why.

“N-no! No, I…I just…You seemed like you…like you were enjoying it, I guess. I didn’t…I wasn’t—"

“I see the way you stare at me sometimes, Rich.”

Richie’s face falls and freezes there. Like someone’s died.

“Eds.”

 _Don’t do it_ , is what he says, in their secret language. Because, Eddie knows, for Richie, it’s too horrifying. But he can’t not. His life is going to pass him by and he won’t…won’t ever have said it. Eddie doesn’t think he’s very brave, not usually, but this he _has_ to do. For him, and for Richie.

“You said it yourself. You watched him kissing me tonight. You already know that I liked it ‘cause you saw. You _watched.”_

“N-no, I…I just _saw,_ is all, I—”

“It’s okay. I like it. I’ve always liked it. The way your eyes feel on me. It feels really good.”

Richie’s mouth falls open. Eddie steps closer.

“Does that answer your question?”

Richie’s big blue eyes are all blown out, the way Eddie remembers him looking when he got high. It’s very nice, he thinks. It’s a very nice sight.

“N-no, I—no, I’m just…” Richie, finally, shrugs, and lets it all go. “Eds, I’m really fuckin’ lost right now.”

Eddie, overcome with it all, gives a half-smile, sweet and sad. Bittersweet. _Bittersweet_ is the way that he thinks about Richie, too. And the song they played on the piano. It’s a beautiful word. And Richie…Richie’s beautiful. He’s not just realizing it. He’s always known. Just…the word never came.

Eddie marches forward with two sure strides. He presses a hand to the back of Richie’s neck and leans up on his tiptoes as he brings Richie’s mouth down to his.

The force of the kiss is certain. Eddie’s hands find Richie’s hair and he threads and tugs. Richie—once his brain has caught up to what’s happening, Eddie presumes with an amused smirk—decisively puts his hands on Eddie—one massaging his hip, and one rubbing firm at his back, searing the skin beneath his jeans and his windbreaker with heat and pressure.

Eddie licks Richie’s bottom lip, and nips at it, and Richie answers by pushing his tongue into Eddie’s mouth, and Eddie could fucking lose it with how happy he is.

Eddie moans. Richie _growls._

Richie breaks away to press a hot kiss to Eddie’s jaw and breath a _“fuck”_ onto his skin. Eddie feels the heat travel down his chest and reach his groin.

Richie’s eyes dart away, down the street, and just as quickly back. He leaves another sweet kiss on Eddie’s skin and pulls gently away.

“Eds—Eds, honey, maybe we shouldn’t…uh…here.”

It’s out in the open and it’s cold and Eddie knows why it makes Richie uncomfortable. He nods, but reaches for Richie once again because he can’t help it, and drags his teeth against his Adam’s apple as Richie’s breath shakes.

“Your parents aren’t home, right?”

“No.”

Richie looks down at him, and raises a dark eyebrow—like he’s got an inkling, and is turned on by how illicit this is becoming, and it’s hot.

Eddie leans forward and up until his lips are a ghost against the cartilage of Richie’s ear.

“I want to give you something I’m not gonna give Tommy.”

In a sudden, horny flash in which his eyes light up like Christmas, Richie’s grabbing his hand and dragging him across the empty street as Eddie’s laugh rings into the night.

The front gate on the Tozier house slams open and blows in the wind behind them, and Eddie is breathless and calling out after Richie with more laughter but Richie is too laser-focused on getting Eddie _in the fucking house_ to stop and chat. He re-grabs Eddie’s hand with a jerk and pulls him in through the front door.

It’s a windstorm, the way that their outer layers fall off. Richie pushing him by the shoulders back against the screen door, and it’s a mystery that will remain unsolved, whose hands pull at which zippers; tug at which buttons. Richie is shirtless before they reach his bedroom, stumbling back through the threshold of his door as he pulls Eddie along with him. Eddie loses his shirt shortly after.

Richie drops to his knees on the floor, and Eddie’s not big on religion. But Richie has his hands on the sides of Eddie’s thighs and he looks up at him, reverently, and it’s something holy. Eddie swallows down the raw feeling of it all, and runs a finger through the hair hanging off Richie’s forehead.

Richie’s tugging at the belt, and then Eddie’s dark denim, and pulling it down in one strong motion, along with his underwear.

Richie stares for the briefest of moments, and then he sits back on his haunches. Eddie almost thinks something’s wrong.

But Richie pulls him closer, and says (and Eddie remembers— _desperate,_ like the Neibolt house):

“Please don’t ever do this with anyone else.”

Then his mouth is over him completely.

Eddie chokes; cries out. His body lurches forward with tears in his eyes, at how much he feels.

He suspects—he doesn’t _know_ , but he might as well know—that Richie’s never done this before either. It’s something they’re _giving_. To each other. Instead of taking, like they’ve always done, with games that don’t mean anything and words that hurt more than they heal.

And then he can’t stop the tears that fall down his cheeks in tiny rivers.

Eddie doesn’t last very long—not with the way Richie lets him cradle his head as he thrusts into his mouth. Not with the way Richie won’t pull off when he comes, even though Eddie makes it clear when he’s about to.

Richie wipes his mouth when it’s over and starts shucking his pants off. He looks like he’s going to jerk himself off right there on the floor while Eddie stands above him but Eddie stops him and lowers himself to the ground in front of Richie, kneeling too. He takes him in hand and starts slow. With a hand to the back of Richie’s neck again, he pulls him forward and kisses him, sweeter than the last time. Richie comes like that and it doesn’t take long for him, either. 

Later in bed, Richie’s eyes won’t leave him, not for anything. They talk and they laugh and when one or the other starts to get hard again, they grind it out against the other’s thigh and it’s all breathless and hot and, _“I’ll die. I’ll die if you ever do this with anyone else.”_ and it's lazy, and wonderful, and Eddie thinks he’d like to live here, in this reality, forever.

**forty**

It’s the moment in which Eddie turns, and sees Richie, and remembers him and remembers it all, and his face falls with the force and the knowledge of it and Richie’s does too, that he knows his life is over and ruined forever.

Richie’s eyes don’t leave his for a long time. But Richie’s eyes are different now. Weighted with the knowledge that they both have and can’t say. Tired, and cynical, and oh-so-fucking cruel.

They follow the line of his body. Mapping it out and the ways that it’s changed, as if he had memorized what it looked like under his clothes all those years ago. Eddie does the same.

Once his eyes find the ring, they glance back to his eyes again. _Angry._ Then back to the ring. Seething and pouting, like Bill’s hand in the hall. And they don’t leave the ring until Richie’s piss-drunk.

_(“Wait—Eddie, you got married?”_

_“Why’s that so fucking funny, dickwad?”_

_“What, to like, a woman?”)_

And now the tables have turned, and _he’s_ the coward. Too afraid to admit that he fucking _forgot_ he was gay. Or—not forgot. Definitely not forgot. He fucked his wife once a month like a chore and when he jerked off in silence in the bathroom it wasn’t to visions of women. But…maybe forgot what it meant to _want._

He feels robbed, and violated. Robbed of feelings and desires and of a future he didn’t even realize he wanted until now. And Richie’s cruel laughter rings in his head, reverberating around like a gunshot in a room of metal. _(“What, to like a woman? Oh, that sounds very interesting, what all does that entail? Was that job invented before fun?”)_

It makes him fucking sick. Literally fucking sick.

He pukes in the toilet back in his room at the town house and it’s fucking disgusting.

Maybe Richie heard it from the room over, too, because when Eddie crawls down to the bar at 2am, assuming (wrongly) that no one else would be itching for a stiff drink at the witching hour, Richie’s shiny, bright eyes lift from where he stands behind the counter and instead of anger it looks like genuine concern. And sadness.

Eddie freezes. He puts one foot back on the staircase, making a move to run.

“Fucking don’t you _dare.”_ It comes from across the room. It is slurred and Richie is drunk, again.

Eddie winces; relents. Thinks he might puke again.

“I don’t want to do this, Richie.”

_“Fuck you.”_

“You’re drunk. I can’t do this with you right now.”

“Sit down. I’m drunk and I’ll say some dumb shit but it’s better than your fucking _silence._ Going up to your room to puke your goddamn guts out, pretending I’m not here.”

“Debatable.”

“Sit. Down. Asshole.”

It’s not the _“cover it up in cruel humor at Eddie’s expense”_ Richie of a few hours ago, at least, so maybe that’s an improvement. But there’s barely any humor in the way Richie’s talking now, which is real and raw to the point of scary.

Eddie slides onto the barstool, and Richie, perhaps reading his mind, slides him whiskey, straight.

Richie looks at him while he drinks; while Richie pours himself one. It’s an old routine they fall back into. Richie watching him. Gauging him. Wanting him, and not knowing how to ask for it. Eddie smiles lazily into his drink, remembering it all.

“I’m glad you see the humor in this,” Richie says.

“Oh, yeah. My whole life’s a lie. It’s real fuckin’ hysterical. Hey, maybe there’s some material in it, for ya.”

“Hey, fuck you, alright? Look what you got outta all this—you got a wife, a fuckin six-figure job doing something just as fucking _boring_ and anal as you are, alright, you’ve got little to no fucking room to complain.”

“Right, I almost forgot, you’re a Hollywood celebrity who lives in a fucking mansion next to Brad Pitt and drives a car that says _‘my cock is small’_ on the license plate—let me play you a song on the world’s smallest fucking violin.”

“My cock is _not_ small, and you know it, and that’s why we’re fucking _sitting at this bar, asshole!”_

Silence.

Richie sighs. Eddie smacks his lips together.

Eddie takes a swig of his drink. Richie does the same.

“I yelled. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m sorr—”

“Yeah, your cock’s pretty big.”

Richie’s eyes lock with his.

Then, eyes creasing, Richie lets out his trapped air in a _“pffffft”_ sound through his lips and he’s doubled over behind the bar in punch-drunk laughter. Eddie’s shaking with it, too.

Minutes or hours or days or years later, when the laughter’s died down and the moment fades back to their horrible reality, Richie’s pouring them both more booze. He slides Eddie his drink back and leans forward with his weight on the bar, and a sly grin.

“So…how much do you remember ‘bout that night?”

Eddie blinks slow at him, and his look is fond but chastising and is telling him to stop without words—though he doesn’t think Richie really gives a shit.

“Enough.”

“Yeah?” Richie gets impossibly closer—so Eddie can feel his breath on his neck and fight his boner to just _not do that right now._ “You remember sitting on top of me on my fuckin _Star Wars_ bedsheets and grindin’ your hard dick onto my thigh until you came all over my cock like a fuckin’ who—”

“I said I remember enough, Richie.” It’s riding the line between gentle and firm now, but Richie still thinks it’s part of the game.

“Whaddya say we…head on back up to my room, and you _show_ me what you fuckin’ remember?”

“Richie, I’m married.”

Richie leans back on his feet. The grin on his face dies.

 _“Excuse_ _me?”_

“I’m…pretty sure we’ve been over thi—”

“Uh, you’re fuckin’ _gay,_ dude.”

Eddie narrows his eyes. “I’m married, is what I am.”

“Eddie, this is not fuckin’ funny.”

“I’m not joking. There’s a ring on my finger.”

“F—” Richie’s eyes flash with anger, and he grabs Eddie’s glass and slams it on the floor and it shatters. “Fuck you, there’s a ring on your finger!”

“You’re gonna wake everyone up under this fuckin’ roof—is that what you want, asshole?” Eddie hisses at him.

“What—are you fuckin’ scared? Fucking scared they’ll wake up and ask what the hell’s going on and I’ll _tell them?”_

“Shut up. You’re acting like a fucking child.”

“And you’re acting like a fucking forty-year-old closet case—what the fuck’s the matter with you?”

Richie’s look is wild and unkempt—tossed-about hair and wide-eyes, heaving chest. His jaw is tense and just as angry as the rest of him and it’s so hot— _so, so hot_ —and Eddie gets a flash of want and wants to press his tongue flat against the dark shadow of stubble there, and lick.

_Fuck him._

“I _am_ a fucking forty-year-old closet case!” Eddie’s chest heaves, too. “And last I fucking checked, so are you!”

“Do you fuck her?”

Eddie swallows. The conversation hits the brakes and screeches on the tracks.

“Richie.”

“Do you fuck her and like it? Don’t lie; I’ll know.”

“Yes, I—I have sex with my wife, Richie.”

“Yeah? And you like it?”

“No, of-fucking-course not, but that’s not the point—”

“What is the point?”

“The point is that I made a promise to her and I’m not gonna fucking break it just because you sucked my dick once when we were a couple of fucking teenagers!”

Richie blinks.

Eddie regrets the words the second they leave his mouth, and he wishes that time weren’t so depressingly fucking linear and final.

For the first time in, well, maybe as much of his life as he can currently remember, the way that Richie looks at him is indecipherable.

“Okay,” Richie says.

And he grabs the bottle of whiskey, and he heads upstairs to bed.

**forty**

_“—‘cause if you don’t make it, Eds, Bill’s gonna be the shortest one in the group, and it’ll just destroy him, Eddie, so you…you can’t, you…Jesus, God—”_

_“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do here, Eds. I’m fuckin’ scared and I don’t know what to fuckin’ do.”_

_“Shoulda been me. Shoulda been me, you asshole. You fucking asshole.”_

_“—look, I don’t really believe you exist, but people do this in movies, and…and listen, buddy, I have to say, you’re a real fucking cunt. ‘Cause you took Stan, and now you—you fuckin’—”_

_“I’m here. I’m here. Just take me instead, asshole. Come on, you pussy, just fuckin’ take me. I’m not a good person. I don’t go to church. I don’t recycle. I hoard my wealth like fuckin’ Smaug. My sets have fuckin’ jokes in them about women drivers. I hate kids. No one’s around to really miss me, except the old Polish lady who lives next door to me who brings me kolaches sometimes. And that old broad’s one foot out the door anyway, so—”_

_“Hey, Eds, stop me if you’ve heard this one before: why was Hellen Keller such a God-awful driver?”_

_“Eddie, if you wake up right now, I swear on my life, I will suck the fuckin’ soul out of your dick like a cheap whore. Put you right back in a coma. A post-nut coma.”_

_“Well, it was worth a shot.”_

_“Listen, I’m probably not ever gonna get the chance to tell you this. But, um…”_

_“Well, fucking shit, this is embarrassing.”_

_“I’ve never, um…I’ve never been with anyone. ‘Cept you.”_

_“That’s…great, now you’re dying, and you’re gonna go out thinking I’m a fuckin’ cuck. Great.”_

_“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a sexless husk, I still, like, jerk off a lot. That—shit. That just made it worse, didn’t it?”_

_“Point is, I…I forgot you, but I…I didn’t, really. I lived my life for thirty fuckin’ years knowing fucking subconsciously that I…felt something once and I was never, ever gonna feel that way again, and I just…gave up.”_

_“And as much as I hate this stupid fucking town, and the clown that we killed, when I came back here and I saw you and I remembered, I…part of me thought, you know, maybe…”_

_“I dunno. Sounds stupid when I say it. Shit, man, I mean, we don’t even really know each other anymore. Maybe you were right, y’know. You should keep stickin’ it to your wife, and I should keep stickin’ it to my left hand. That’s how these things are supposed to go, right? Infidelity, in movies. Never really works out, does it?”_

_“Okay, so…I just talked to Bev, or…cried into her shoulder for the better part of an hour, and…turns out, maybe I should have put a little more thought behind what I was gonna say to you on your deathbed about…about us. Sorry about that.”_

_“She said I should keep it short and sweet, and stop talking out my ass. Her words.”_

_“So, uh…”_

_“I really love you. And, I always have.”_

_“Wife. No wife. I mean, given the choice, y’know, I’d prefer no wife. But…doesn’t really change how I feel.”_

_“And you’d really be doing me a fucking solid by not dying.”_

_“Alright, uhh. Deuces. Sincerely, Richie. In case, you…you didn’t get that, already, who was…talking…I’ll shut up, now.”_

**forty-one**

His friends bring him cake as soon as he’s conscious enough to have visitors, and also healthy enough to eat solid food. They decorate his hospital room with balloons (not red ones) and Richie gets him a card with an awful and situationally tasteless Far Side comic on it, reading: _“So, you’re not dead yet!”._

He’d turned forty-one while he was still under the knife. When they weren’t sure if he was ever gonna wake up again.

He flatlined. Twice.

Richie explains this to him with tears in his eyes once everyone else has filtered out of the room, and it’s just them two left. Richie sits on the hospital bed with his hands tucked under his thighs and his legs swinging out beneath him, and Eddie looks at him and, even under the influence of many, many pain narcotics, is able to think that he looks like just about the tallest, saddest child he’s ever seen.

Eddie tells him this (still very, very high) and Richie laughs, heartily. The sound makes everything better.

“You’re crying,” Eddie says with a frown.

“N-nah, I’m…” Richie sniffles. “Y-yeah. You caught me.” He wipes snot away from his nose on the back of his hand.

“Don’t like it when you cry. You should laugh more.”

Richie just raises an amused eyebrow at him. His eyes trace the plane of Eddie’s face. He gives the ghost of a heavenly smile.

“’S so beautiful, Rich. When you laugh.”

**forty-one**

He’s discharged the following week.

He tells Myra not to fuss over him so much, in a way that, at least to him means _back off in front of Richie_ , but of course, she doesn’t understand that.

She’s pulled the car around and has come back inside to get him and the first time she sees him on his feet and walking is an emotional moment for her.

Richie’s the one at his side, with his arm held out so Eddie can lean on it if he needs to. But once Myra sees him, she rushes to him and wraps her arms around him—gently enough, but barely. And she’s crying incoherently into his chest while Richie gets forgotten.

“I just—can’t believe—I’m just so happy, Eddie, honey, we thought you were—”

Wincing as her hold on him gets a little too tight, he gently adjusts her arms with a smile.

“Aw, I was only sort-of dead, Myra. Hey, hey—its…it’s okay.”

She even laughs a little at that, which is incredible, because she never laughs at any of his jokes.

Richie does not laugh.

Richie watches from down the hall, and Eddie looks back, and it’s an utterly broken, deadened, wet-faced look that he knows he’s only seen him wear in the kinds of nightmares the clown would give.

**forty-one**

Richie peers at him over the top of his pint glass from across the booth.

Ben’s bachelor party would’ve been tame, or non-existent, but Richie pushed for the strip club. Eddie almost didn’t go. Almost told Myra and let her freak the fuck out as an excuse _not_ to go. But when he brought it up, Ben looked kinda sad. So, here he is. And here Richie is. Here they both are.

There is mocking, horribly amused laughter in Richie’s eyes because Eddie is getting a lap dance from a 20-something blonde with (more than likely) plastic tits. Eddie has never been more uncomfortable in his life, and the only person who knows that, of course, is Richie. Everyone else at the table just _whoop_ -s and laughs. Eddie doesn’t know what to do with his face, or his hands, or his body, or any of it. He’s trying to pretend to enjoy it. He thinks he probably just looks constipated.

It’s brief, at least. And when another girl starts to make her way to Richie, he just holds up a hand and says, as though it’s the easiest thing in the world:

“Yeah, I don’t bat for your team, honey. That’s the one you want,” as he points down the table to Ben.

Eddie burns with jealousy.

Richie had come out to the public within a month after making it out of Derry. It was mostly well-received. He looked better. He drank less. He got a personal trainer and a fucking nutritionist. He has a movie deal. His stand-up had gotten better. His _God-awful_ stand-up, was… _good_ now. Myra had it on the TV one night when Eddie had come home late. She was _laughing._

Eddie scrunches his face and swallows his beer. He tries to think about _one thing_ he had done with himself since Derry. One _fucking thing_ that changed _._

He’d taken up smoking.

He steps outside when the rest of the guys are too drunk to really miss him for a few minutes. He smokes on the curb of the L.A. street, pink and blue neon lights from the flashing strip club sign shining down in his eyes and worsening his headache. He pulls an aspirin out of his fanny-pack and dry-swallows it, and chases it with a pull from his cigarette.

 _“Jesus,”_ is muttered in that unmistakable rasp from the swinging door of the club.

“What do you want?” Eddie bites. He doesn’t even know _why_ anymore. Richie didn’t do anything wrong. That’s what’s so fucking irritating.

“Who, me? Oh, I came out here for a quickie, but, uh…on second thought, I don’t really dig on smokers. Nasty habit.”

“Fuck off.”

Richie’s footsteps sound out on the sidewalk as he approaches.

“Hey,” he stands directly in front of him, blocking his view of the street and tapping at the wrist holding the cigarette to his mouth. “Sharing is caring.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and passes off the cigarette.

Richie takes a drag, and seems to savor it well enough.

“So, you’re a fuckin’ mess, huh.” Richie says, bluntly. It’s an observation, and not a question.

Eddie glares back at him and says nothing.

Richie takes the cigarette and flicks it to the ground, stomping on it.

“Hey, _asshole,_ I was—”

“Shouldn’t smoke. It’s fuckin’ bad for you, _idiot.”_

Eddie shrugs and looks away. He knows how fucking ridiculous it makes him seem. He only did it because it was the easiest thing he could do that would make him feel different. Like he’d shed some layer of the horrible person the clown and his mother had made him into. He did it because it wasn’t real change. Real change fucking terrified him. It was just fake change, and that was still safe.

Richie looks at him, and it’s cutting and uncomfortable.

“How’s whatshername?”

“Myra.”

“Right. Myra.”

_“Fine.”_

“Just _fine?_ If you were laying pipe into me on the regular, I’d be a far sight more than _fine.”_

“Knock it off.”

“Yeah, alright.”

Richie crosses his arms and looks down at the sidewalk as he digs the toe of his boot into the concrete.

“This is never gonna fucking change, is it?” he asks, resigned.

“What?”

“Us.”

Eddie swallows.

It’s clear by the way Richie says it, and the way that he looks at him when he does, that he really means _“You”._

“I know you see a shrink,” Richie says. “What the fuck do you talk to her about if not this?”

“My OCD,” Eddie answers. “My mom.”

“Not the fact that you’re a flaming homosexual trapped in a loveless hell-marriage?”

“I love my wife,” Eddie bites. The more aggressively he says it, the more it sounds like the truth.

Richie _laughs._

“Yeah, and I bet you loved _mommy,_ too.”

Eddie slaps him so hard his head snaps to the right, and his glasses lift off his face a bit from the force.

Richie blinks—his broad jaw tense—and the energy in the air dies.

Eddie stands frozen, mouth hanging open, his right hand stuck in mid-air and his body sickening with instant regret.

Richie exhales like a sigh, and gingerly turns his head, bringing a hand gently up to his face where a red mark blossoms.

“Yep. Okay. I deserved that.”

Eddie’s shoulders relax, if only a bit. But he shakes his head.

“No, that’s not…I shouldn’t have hit you, I’m sorry.”

“Really, Eds, if I’m gonna be smacked around by anyone, I’d rather it be you. I’ll be honest, I’m at, like, half-chub right now.”

“Fucking gross.”

Richie waggles his eyebrows.

Eddie frowns, and casts his eyes down towards his shoes.

“Shouldn’t’ve hit you,” he mumbles again.

Richie reaches out with a big, warm hand on the top of his bicep, near his shoulder. He rubs his thumb over the cloth of Eddie’s shirt, massaging the skin there gently, like he’d done in his bedroom one night when they were nineteen and naked together.

“It’s okay.”

Eddie, painfully, looks up at him.

“I wish it were easier to hate you.”

Richie furrows his brow.

“What?”

“Really, I think I just hate myself.”

“Eddie, what’s going—”

“Used to be,” Eddie starts, feeling like he’s gonna hyperventilate. “Used to be I knew who I was, you know. Like, there was a point, after the clown when we were kids that I…I knew who I was, and I wasn’t afraid anymore. But you were still so scared, and I thought…I thought you’d never…”

“Eddie…”

“I thought you’d never say anything. But you _did._ I kissed you and you let me and…and then we lost it all when we moved away. I lost…I lost _everything,_ Richie. And now I’m the one that…that can’t do it. I know how it feels, Richie, I know how it fucking feels to be that _paralyzed_ and not be able to…God, I’m so sorry you ever felt like this…”

Eddie’s face is covered in tears and his body is heaving with not being able to breathe enough.

Richie kisses him.

It works. Eddie sighs out his anxiety into Richie’s mouth and feels his body slack, and Richie’s pushing him back into the wall with a hand framing his body. The kiss is forceful and it says: _“calm down”._

Kissing Richie as a man is so wonderfully different from kissing him in the half-remembered memories. Richie’s stubble scratches his face and his glasses press hard against his nose and he smells like musky cologne and sweat and a little bit like sex. He’s stronger, and his body is fuller, and Eddie feels safer in his touch and in his presence than he ever did.

Eddie doesn’t exactly kiss back—not really. Doesn’t move his lips too much, except for maybe once or twice. But he lets Richie move his. And he gives into the feel of it.

Once Eddie starts breathing normal again, Richie pulls away and takes a step back. He wipes a tiny trail of spit away from the corner of his bottom lip with his thumb and Eddie watches as he does it.

“Sorry,” says Richie.

“’S okay,” says Eddie.

Eddie sniffles and starts to slink out from under Richie’s arm that brackets the wall.

“I should probably head on back inside—"

“Wait,” Richie reaches out; stops him. “Um, can I…see it?”

Eddie narrows his eyes. _“Richie.”_

“No, not—” Richie laughs. “Not your dick. Although, if you insist—”

Eddie groans. “What, Richie?”

Richie swallows stiff. “The scar.”

Eddie’s mouth falls open and he takes in a little bit of air, like a silent gasp.

“Oh, uh…”

“Is that…too weird?” Richie’s wincing. “I don’t want to make you…uncomfortable—”

“No, no, it’s…uh…”

He frowns, and looks down. Eddie places his hand, tentatively, on the bottom hem of his t-shirt. He looks back up to Richie.

Richie watches the hand, and then watches him.

It strikes him now. That this was how he always wanted Richie to look at him. Sure of himself. Sure of what he wants. Sure that it’s Eddie. It’s insanely fucking sexy. His brain short-circuits just watching it happen.

And here Eddie is, blushing like a fuckin’ virgin, scared to lift up his own shirt and show Richie a _scar._

He frowns deeper, and takes a deep breath.

He wants to just tear the shirt up and look away and get it over with. But he fights the urge. He pulls slowly. Maybe it comes across as sexy and Richie doesn’t notice the way his hands shake and the way he’s fucking terrified.

He pulls it up to just above the scar, hand resting with his bunched shirt at his sternum.

Richie stares.

Thoughtfully, Richie’s fingertips come up and graze it. Eddie hasn’t thought too much about it before, because he doesn’t ever really have to think about his body in terms of how sexually attractive it is, but he thinks it’s kind of grotesque. When he and Myra have sex now, he keeps his shirt on.

But Richie’s fingertips trace the line like it’s the line of his cock. The act is dripping with so much sex that Eddie’s breathing deep and aroused, and his dick starts to respond in his jeans—not violently—not sticking up like a fuckin’ flagpole or nothing but the gentle state of turned on that is sort of…comforting. Familiar to what it used to feel like to be around Richie, when they were young and hormones hung at the end of every breath and word.

He starts to get the goosebumps on his skin—hair standing up like it once did in his bedroom when they were fifteen and Richie touched him with sex on his brain for the first time.

Richie must feel that energy, too. Permeating the air between them. Eddie sees it in his hungry stare.

“It’s healed,” Richie says, without the seeming ability to say much else.

“Uh—uh-huh,” Eddie nearly groans.

Richie’s eyes dart up to his, then back down to his hand on his chest. On Eddie’s body.

Palm flat, he drags it down, and down.

Eddie latches a hand, firm but loving, onto his wrist and guides Richie’s hand back to his side. Eddie’s shirt drops in front of him, and he turns around and heads back inside through the front door.

**forty-two**

Richie has not looked at him in many months.

Because they have not spoken in many months.

Now, they sit at a measured distance from each other on the couch. Richie leans forward, arms resting on his knees, eyes wide and still processing. Eddie hunches over, staring at his feet. His hair is still a little damp from the rain outside, and he hadn’t brought an umbrella with him from New York. He’d forgotten it in his haste as he’d thrown together an overnight bag and hopped on a red-eye flight. He didn’t have much at he and Myra’s house that was really _his,_ anyway. Nothing he’d miss.

“Sorry, let me see if I can get this straight: you…”

“…told my wife we were sleeping together, yeah.”

Richie blinks.

“But, we’re…not…sleeping together.”

“I can file for at-fault divorce. So, it’ll be quicker.”

Richie, still not looking at him, has a pretty visceral reaction to this. His eyes go even wider and his brow pulls together and his mouth hangs open, and he stands and starts pacing in his living room.

“You…you’re…” he stops; looks at him. “Wait. _No.”_

Eddie bites his lip and nods.

 _“Really?_ You— _really?”_

Richie starts looking like a kid who’s just been told he’s going to Disney World.

“But you…you can’t do that, come on, you didn’t—you didn’t actually cheat on her. You literally _refused_ to cheat on her. Even when I was trying so hard to be your skanky mistress.”

“I just want it to be over, Richie. I want it to be done. If it’s quicker, it’s…easier,” Eddie admits. “Besides, I’ve got enough steamy texts from you back from when I _was_ married that no jury is going to look at and _not_ want to convict me of adultery. So, I guess, thanks for that.”

Richie grins.

“You kept those?”

Eddie sighs, and smiles. “Yeah. They, uh…helped.”

It’s the nicest way he can say, _“I rubbed my dick raw to them, thank you very much.”_

Richie finally plants his feet and looks at him and his eyes are open, and honest, and so fucking _genuine._

“And you…you came _here.”_

Eddie swallows and sits up straight to say what he came here to say.

“I didn’t mean to push you away.”

“Yeah, but you…” Richie’s voice breaks a little. Shy. “You did.”

“Yeah.”

Eddie sniffles.

“I just needed time away from you. I know that sounds weird. I spent twenty-seven years away from you. And it was hard, even, to spend one more. But…I needed time to work on myself. I…wasn’t the man I wanted to be. Wasn’t who I wanted to be…for you.”

He can meet Richie’s eyes now, he tells himself. He can. He _does._ It’s…like a breath of fresh air, after being held underwater. He can breathe again.

“I didn’t want to be another cliché closet case, Richie, I didn’t. But I also didn’t want to be the kind of guy that cheats on his wife. I made a promise to her.”

“Yeah, and what does she think now?”

“That I broke it,” says Eddie. “But I didn’t. And I know that. And so do you. But she…she was a lot of what was wrong with our marriage, too. Of what was poisoning it. Maybe this means she’ll never learn from that; that she’ll just put all of it on me, but…it also means I get to move on with my life faster. And I…I…” he swallows. “I deserve that. And you do. I made a promise to you, too.”

_(“I’ll die if you ever do this with anyone else.”_

_“I won’t. I swear, Richie, I won’t—")_

“I remember,” Richie says.

“I broke it.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Richie chokes, wet-eyed.

“I love you,” Eddie offers. “I still love you.”

He watches Richie’s body as he takes it in. Like it’s a physical force. He watches it move through him. Hit him, like an ocean wave.

Richie sniffles some more tears away, and nods, hands stuffed in his jean pockets.

“Yeah, me too.”

They descend into comfortable awkwardness after that. Richie gives him leftovers from the Chinese place he’d ordered from the night before. He brings Eddie’s suitcase to the guest room, which on its own is larger than any room in Eddie’s house in New York.

Eddie side-eyes him as he steps into the room and Richie remains at the doorway with a tight smile. Questions the respectful barrier that Richie is still placing between them. It’s very sweet. Overwhelmingly sweet. And Eddie loves him for it. But he didn’t fly across the country for sweet. He’d spent enough time alone, and Richie’d allowed it because of how fucking _sweet_ he is, and how much he _respects_ him. Eddie’s done with sweet. And done with being alone.

Eddie counts the minutes from when Richie has flipped off the light in the guest room and said _“goodnight”_. As he lays in bed with his legs crossed, hands resting folded on his chest, he pictures Richie shuffling back to the master bedroom in his stupid bunny slippers, walking into the ensuite, splashing cold water in his face and brushing his teeth.

He waits, he thinks, the appropriate amount of time.

He arrives in the doorway of Richie’s bedroom as he’s turning down the California king. He leans in the doorway and watches; arms crossed. The lines of Richie’s body and the gentle curve of his ass, and the stretch of his t-shirt across his shoulders. He smiles lazily.

He sees the moment Richie feels his eyes on him; sees him straighten his spine and turn his head towards the door with gentle alarm.

Eddie smirks.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

Richie snorts. “You gotta close your eyes first.”

“Oh, is that the trick?”

“Yeah.”

Eddie’s smirk grows wider.

“Wanna fool around?”

Richie grins. “I’m tempted to tell you that I don’t actually find you attractive, just for the crazy plot twist.”

“I can go back to my room.” Eddie throws a thumb over his shoulder in gesture.

“Wait don’t—”

Eddie turns back and raises his eyebrows, taunting.

“I’m kidding. Obviously. Please…stay.” Richie clears his throat once. “With all twelve of your abs.”

Eddie leaves the doorway and storms up to Richie, and before anything more can be said, drops to his knees.

Richie hisses at the sight. _“Oh, fu—”_

The quiet, shuffling sound that Richie’s pajama pants make as Eddie pulls them down is violent in the silence of the room.

He’s mouthing and dragging his teeth across the bulge in Richie’s underwear, and soon there’s a wet spot, either from Eddie’s spit or the head of Richie’s cock growing hard beneath it—it doesn’t really matter.

Eddie pulls his underwear down and gets his cock in his mouth before his mind can race and think of another thing to do.

The way the room fills with nothing but the sound of slurping, and his gentle moaning, and Richie’s groans and keens, is more viscerally erotic than—Eddie suspects—anything that’s ever happened in the world, maybe ever. Richie’s head is tossed back a little, and he’s got a hand on the back of Eddie’s skull, and Eddie’s never sucked cock before but he suspects Richie wouldn’t care.

“Eddie—Eds, honey—you gotta stop.”

Eddie doesn’t want to, but he pulls off Richie’s dick at the request and Richie closes his eyes and audibly groans again at the sight of the spit string that connects Eddie’s bottom lip to his cock.

“I’m gonna come, and I want you to fuck me,” Richie says once he’s got a hold of himself again.

Eddie frowns. “So come twice.”

“Eds, I’m forty. Not a sex doll.” Richie deadpans.

Eddie shrugs. “We’ll work on it.”

Richie’s eyes threaten to roll back into his skull at the implications as Eddie stands up, and Richie grabs him and kisses him, pushing them both back onto the bed.

Richie pulls back as Eddie surges forward, and Eddie frowns again at the absence of his lips.

“Okay, wait—what are you…what are you okay with, what do you need?”

“You. My dick. Yesterday.” Eddie’s grabbing for him.

“W-w-wait, okay, yeah, but _wait._ We don’t—”

“What?” Eddie asks, exasperated.

“We haven’t had sex in twenty years, okay?” Richie breathes. “I love you, but slow down! I don’t…I don’t know what’s good for you, I don’t know…I know you have a problem, with, like, messes and shit, but—”

“Richie, I just dropped to my knees on the ground in front of you and swallowed your cock. When we were nineteen we came all over each other and didn’t clean up for hours afterwards.”

“Okay, yeah, I just…I still just feel like we should take it slow, you know? Just…talk to me.”

“I…” Eddie looks up at him. “Okay.”

“I’ll be fuckin’ honest with you, okay, I don’t know what I like. I like you. I think you’re hot. And I’ve watched porn. Lots of porn. Which, I’m told, is not a reliable source of information. And that’s about the long and short of it.”

Eddie breathes. “I think I’m okay with messy sex if it’s with you,” he admits. “Everything was always so sterile with Myra. But I remember…what it felt like, that night with you, and…I just forget myself, I guess. Everything about you when we were young was messy. I can’t _want_ you in that way and not…not want it messy.”

Eddie smiles shy. Richie returns it.

“Okay. Okay, we’re getting somewhere, Eds.”

Richie leans over and reaches into his end table drawer. He feels around. After a few seconds, he shuts his eyes.

“Fuck,” he breathes.

“What?”

_“Fucking God—motherfuck—son of a bitch—”_

“Richie?”

“Do you…need a condom?” Richie asks carefully. “Because I don’t…have…them. Not really a necessary commodity for forty-year-old virgins.”

Eddie thinks. “Do you?”

Richie shakes his head from side-to-side. “No.”

“Are you sure? If you’d rather fuck me, it’s totally—”

“Eddie, I don’t need you to wear a condom.”

“Then no.”

Richie pulls out just the lube, and crawls on the bed.

“I want to watch you finger yourself,” Eddie blurts, and Richie blinks at him, pupils wide.

“Y-yeah, I can…do…that.”

Richie leans back on the pillows while Eddie strips himself naked. Richie’s squirting lube onto his fingers. Eddie watches him, and Richie’s eyes won’t leave him.

“God, I _fucking—”_ Richie’s head falls back on the pillow.

“What?” Eddie crawls forward. “What, baby, what’s up?”

“I just…I’ve done this, thinking about you, so many times, and I—”

“Yeah?”

“It’s just a lot.” Richie sniffles. “Sorry. I’m gonna cry like a bitch no less than, like, five times tonight. It won’t be sexy. Or hot. Or fun. It’ll just be vaguely uncomfortable. In that socially awkward way.”

“I think it’s hot.”

“Me crying?”

“What, is that weird?” Eddie wrinkles up his face. “That I kinda want you to cry on my dick?”

Riche giggles, nodding. “Yeah, it makes you a sick, perverted fuck.”

“Yeah, just for you.” Eddie drags his teeth along Richie’s neck and kisses there.

“Jesus.”

Eddie grabs Richie’s hand—the one with lubed-up fingers, and he guides it down to where they both want it, and Richie gasps.

“Come on. Hurry up,” Eddie tells him, firm, and Richie’s back arches and his dick gets impossibly harder, dribbling with pre-cum. Eddie presses Richie’s fingers into his hole, getting him started, then moves back on the bed to watch.

Watches as Richie writhes on the bed and keens as he works himself open, and Eddie, leering, grabs the lube and spreads some on his hand, and starts working his dick.

Richie, at one point, lifts his head and sees this, and nearly loses consciousness.

_“Fuck—oh, fuck—Fuck, Eddie—”_

His head falls back on the pillow behind him, and that just won’t do.

“Hey. No. Richie, look at me.”

Richie tears his head back up and opens his eyes, one at a time.

“Look at how hard you get me, baby. Just for you. Come on. Watch me. Watch me jerk off, watching you. I want you to watch me.”

“Eds—” it’s broken.

“God, you’re so—look at you, so fuckin’ wet—”

 _“Hngh—”_ Richie nearly slips back onto the pillow.

“No. Come on, eyes on me. That’s it. So fuckin’ pretty. Love the way your eyes feel on me, baby. Always fucking me with your eyes when you can’t—” Eddie gasps. “When you can’t say what you mean, and you—”

“Eds, I’m gonna—”

“Don’t you dare.”

Eddie leans forward; slaps Richie’s hand away from his ass and brackets his frame with his arms, looking down at him as he presses the tip of his cock to Richie’s wet entrance.

Eddie leans down; mouths kisses onto Richie’s cheek.

“You okay?”

Richie nods.

He holds Richie’s hips in one hand and thrusts forward careful but sure. Richie breathes, his back arches, and he cries out. Eddie reaches down and grips the base of Richie’s cock, so he doesn’t come before Eddie’s even all the way in.

Eddie inches his way in, groaning low into the space beneath Richie’s jaw.

He decides he more than just likes it. He actively _loves_ how dirty sex with Richie is. Dirty isn’t the adjective his mother made it out to be. Everything about Richie is dirty. And _hot._ The way his body takes his cock. The way it grips him. The way he moans like the most salacious of back-alley whores. The way his eyes are starting to shine with how good and alive and on fire Eddie’s making him feel. Everything down to his strength and the undeniable _man_ -ness of him, and how Eddie can, even now, think about how Richie might—maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe an hour from now—press him down into the mattress and hold him there and _take_ from him, as Eddie did to him now.

Once Eddie’s buried in him, he doesn’t start out slow. He starts out brutal. Richie has tears falling from his eyes, like he promised, and Eddie won’t last long, because sex has never been this good.

“Never loved anyone that wasn’t you. I swear to God, never. Never fucked anyone like this—Richie—just you, just you, God, you’re so perfect—"

_“Eddie—”_

“Feel so good—”

“Fuck—Christ, harder—”

“Yeah? Yeah?”

 _“God—_ yes. God, _yes—"_

“Take it so fucking good. Yeah, you fuckin’ do, baby. God—made for it. You’re fucking made for it. So fucking tight. Made for taking dick, Jesus—”

“I’m—”

And Eddie feels it—feels him clenching, and he knows what to do.

 _“Don’t,”_ he growls, and brings Richie’s hand over to grip the base of his dick again. Richie’s eyes go wide.

“Fuckin’ _asshole—”_

“I said don’t come, or I will fucking pull out and go jerk off in the shower.”

Richie shuts up at that.

It’s five more thrusts until Eddie’s coming, buried completely in the heat of him, and groaning loud and long into Richie’s neck while Richie feels it and fights it. Richie’s gasping and panting and making desperate sounds, like he’s in actually some kind of pain, and Eddie takes only a moment to savor the post-orgasm haze before he pulls out and flips them, laying back on the pillows and guiding Richie to sit on top of him.

“Rub it out on my leg. Come on. Remember?”

Richie’s a babbling, gasping mess. _“Eddie, you—”_

“Now, Richie.”

Richie leans down, buries his face in Eddie’s neck this time, and starts grinding his hips down against his thigh. Eddie feels the erotic wet pull of Richie’s cock against his skin, but it’s not long until he loses it, grunting and groaning and spilling all over Eddie’s hip and stomach.

_“God, Iloveyousomuch—"_

Richie collapses, one leg tucked over Eddie’s frame as he lays on top of him, breathing. Eddie smiles, turns, and brushes hair out of his face.

“That good?”

Richie shoves him, insincerely irritated.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“It wasn’t? It was bad?” Eddie teases.

“Terrible. I hated it. I want a refund.”

“Not a hooker, Richie.”

“You’d be a bad one. Not a viable career option for you. You’re terrible, sex-wise.”

“You think? I was thinking of quitting my day job.” It’s a joke, of course, but maybe not that part.

“I think most tricks generally want to _come,_ if they’re paying.”

“I let you come.”

Richie’s dick twitches again against his thigh. Eddie raises an eyebrow, and Richie looks genuinely startled.

“Huh. That’s weird. I thought you said the sex was bad.”

 _“Shutup,”_ Richie grumbles into his skin.

“You can fuck me next, if you think you can do better. Probably can, too. So big, probably split me in half. ‘S like a monster truck fucking a moped.”

Richie’s dick twitches again, more noticeably now. And he’s laughing while also groaning, so it’s an incredible mix of hilarious and horny.

 _“I’mgonnadie Eds_ , don’t say that—"

But Eddie’s lost all sense of control, giggling like a maniac.

It is a gradual process, the healing. Coming out of the exile he’d inflicted upon himself out of fear. It takes more out of him than he’d expect. But he’s no longer alone with it. At night, and in the daytime, Richie is with him. And even on occasion when he’s not, it’s like he is. Like he can feel his eyes on him, but always, now.

The problem with Derry was that it always felt like a home to go back to—mixed terribly and confusingly with both dread and warm nostalgia. Richie is just warm. And nothing about him anymore is confusing, or scary. And he’s a home that stays with him and never leaves.

Eddie feels like a whole person now. Like he’s finally killed the clown, and ripped off its hold, and taken back the part of him that it robbed and had no right to. He expresses this to Richie, and he _knows._ He gets it. He understands— _of course_ he does. The sheer elation. The incredible joy of having agency in his own fucking life. Meeting the future without trepidation but actual, genuine delight in the notion that there will be a next day, and that more days will follow it. And Richie will be there.

Days turn into days, turn into days, turn into days.

**Author's Note:**

> stream folklore wear a mask donate BLM
> 
> I am rachelamberish on tumblr. Come talk to me!


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